"Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures."

Patience, Friend

Coming back home to Manang after bpit term leaves me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth.

Maybe it’s just the green tea I am currently sipping on as it leaves my tongue, but something about the lingering aftertaste tells me that I’m tasting more than just tannins.

There is a bit of sweetness there in the recollection of memories created over the last few weeks.

Like being able to dress up as a superhero, teach dance, and work with other volunteers from all over Thailand at a summer camp in Korat. Or bear witness to a Pop Up Wedding on the scenic shores of Railay Beach in Krabi. Hike up off the beaten path in search of the tallest waterfall in Satun. Share sandwiches and wine on the beach with good friends. Sing Hotel California on stage at an Irish Pub in Hua Hin in a key best left to Don Henley. Make it out of an Escape Room in Bangkok with PCVs from Cambodia with just four minutes left to spare. Celebrate all that is just so good and right with the world with people I have come to know, love, and care about in just the past ten months or so. Living in a country that is slowly becoming an indissoluble part of me.

And yet, with this growing connectivity comes the weight of unavoidable responsibility.

Responsibility not only to ourselves but to our communities. People we have brought into our circle of trust, and who have entrusted us with the difficult work of development.

We are expected to produce tangible results, and therein lies some unexpected bitterness.

I am at times, unsure of the path forward. How it is that I can best do what it is that I came here to do. Summon forth the will and the strength to exert an effort beyond that which seems within my own personal capacity. Put in the work day in and day out to make an unfinished dream come true. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I feel like I am finding new ways to discover patience as time unfolds. Patience in the process. Patience in the planning. Patience in the outcome. Learning little by little that all good things come in time and that all great things take a lot longer than expected.